dtSearch Desktop dtSearch Network Version 7 Copyright 1991-2021 dtSearch Corp. www.dtsearch.com SALES 1-800-483-4637 (301) 263-0731 Fax (301) 263-0781 [email protected] TECHNICAL (301) 263-0731 [email protected] 1 Table of Contents 1. Getting Started _____________________________________________________________ 1 Quick Start 1 Installing dtSearch on a Network 7 Automatic deployment of dtSearch on a Network 8 Command-Line Options 10 Keyboard Shortcuts 11 2. Indexes __________________________________________________________________ 13 What is a Document Index? 13 Creating an Index 13 Caching Documents and Text in an Index 14 Indexing Documents 15 Noise Words 17 Scheduling Index Updates 17 3. Indexing Web Sites _________________________________________________________ 19 Using the Spider to Index Web Sites 19 Spider Options 20 Spider Passwords 21 Login Capture 21 4. Sharing Indexes on a Network _________________________________________________ 23 Creating a Shared Index 23 Sharing Option Settings 23 Index Library Manager 24 Searching Using dtSearch Web 25 5. Working with Indexes _______________________________________________________ 27 Index Manager 27 Recognizing an Existing Index 27 Deleting an Index 27 Renaming an Index 27 Compressing an Index 27 Verifying an Index 27 List Index Contents 28 Merging Indexes 28 6. Searching for Documents _____________________________________________________ 29 Using the Search Dialog Box 29 Browse Words 31 More Search Options 32 Search History 33 i Table of Contents Searching for a List of Words 33 7. Search Results _____________________________________________________________ 37 Copying Retrieved Files 37 Saving Search Results 37 Selecting Items in Search Results 38 Search Reports 38 8. Search Requests ___________________________________________________________ 41 Search Requests (Overview) 41 Words and Phrases 42 Wildcards (*, ?, and =) 42 Fuzzy Searching 42 Phonic Searching 43 Stemming 43 Synonym Searching 43 Numeric Range Searching 44 Field Searching 44 AND connector 46 OR Connector 46 W/N Connector 46 NOT and NOT W/N 46 Variable Term Weighting 47 Search Macros 47 9. Options__________________________________________________________________ 49 Indexing Options 49 Letters and Words 51 Alphabet Customization 52 Filtering Options 53 File Types 54 File Segmentation Rules 57 Text Fields 58 Search Options 60 Search Results Options 60 User Thesaurus 62 Document Display 63 Document Fonts and Colors 64 External Viewers 66 Settings Files 66 10. Index ___________________________________________________________________ 69 ii Getting Started Quick Start dtSearch can search terabytes of text in a second. It does this by building an index that stores the location of each word in your files. Therefore, to get started with dtSearch, the first step is to build an index of your documents. Indexing Documents 1. Click Index > Create Index. 2. In the Create Index dialog box, enter a name for the index and click OK. 1 Getting Started 3. dtSearch will ask if you want to add documents to the index. Click Yes to go to the Update Index dialog box. 4. Add documents to the index Click Add Folder... to add a folder to the list of folders to index. Click Add Web... to index a site using the dtSearch Spider. Click Add Outlook... to add folders from your Outlook profile to the index. 5. Click Start Indexing to begin adding documents to your index. Updating an Index If you edit your original documents, you will need to update your index to reflect the changes (otherwise, hit highlighting will be incorrect). To update your index, click Index > Update Index (or press Ctrl+U). Check the Index new or modified documents box and the Remove deleted documents box, and then click the Start Indexing button. To schedule automatic updates of your indexes, click Index > Index Manager > Schedule Updates. Supported File Types For a list of the file formats that dtSearch supports, see "What file formats does dtSearch support" at http://support.dtsearch.com. Indexing Large Document Collections For suggestions to improve indexing of large document collections, see "Optimizing indexing of large document collections" at http://support.dtsearch.com. 2 dtSearch Manual Searching using the Index 1. Click the Search button on the dtSearch button bar, or press Ctrl+S, to open the Search dialog box. Indexes to search The top right of the dialog box shows a list of the indexes you have created; select one or more to search. Indexed word list The top left of the dialog box shows a list of the words in the currently selected index. If more than one index is selected for searching, you can select the index to display in the word list by clicking the down arrow above the word list. 2. Enter a search under Search request. 3. Select any items under Search features (such as fuzzy searching) that you want to use. 4. Click Search to begin the search. 3 Getting Started Search Types Any words or All words Finds a list of words or phrases • use "quotation marks" around phrases • add + in front of any word or phrase to require it • add - in front of any word or phrase or to exclude it • examples: banana pear "apple pie" "apple pie" -salad +"ice cream" Boolean search Finds a structured group of words or phrases linked by and, or, not, w/. • examples: tart apple pie – the entire phrase must be present apple pie and pear tart – both phrases must be present apple pie or pear tart – either phrase must be present apple pie and not pear tart - only apple pie must be present apple w/5 pear – apple must occur within 5 words of pear apple not w/27 pear - apple must not occur within 27 words of pear subject contains apple pie – finds apple pie in a subject field • use ( ) when a search includes two or more connectors: apple and pear or orange could mean (apple and pear) or orange, or it could mean apple and (pear or orange) Search Features Stemming Finds grammatical variations on endings, like applies, applied, applying in a search for apply Fuzzy searching Finds words even if they are misspelled. A search for alphabet with a fuzziness of 1 would also find alphaqet. With a fuzziness of 4, the same search would find both alphaqet and alpkaqet Phonic searching Finds words that sound alike, like Smythe in a search for Smith Synonym searching Finds word synonyms using a comprehensive English language thesaurus or user-defined custom thesaurus terms 4 dtSearch Manual Special Characters ? matches any single character appl? matches apply or apple * matches any number of characters appl*ion matches application ~~ indicates numeric range 14~~18 looks for 14, 15, 16, 17 or 18 = matches any single digit p12== matches p1234 Variable term weights A number after a word assigns a specific positive or negative weight when ranking retrieved documents. Example: apple:5 salad:-2 More Search Options To search without an index, or to search by filename, date, or size, click the More Search Options tab. To view or reuse a prior search request, click the Search History tab in the Search dialog box. For information on forensic searching, see Forensics-related features at http://support.dtsearch.com. Viewing Search Results After a search, dtSearch will display the results of the search. The top half of the dtSearch window will list all of the files retrieved in the search, and the lower half will show the first document in the list, with hits highlighted. 5 Getting Started 1. To select a document to view from the search results list, double-click on it. 2. To jump to the next hit in a document window, click Next Hit on the button bar (or press SPACEBAR). Click the Next Doc button (or press CTRL+SPACEBAR) to go to the next document. 3. To change the way search results are sorted, click on one of the column headers (Name, Score, Location, Date, etc.). 4. Click the Launch button (or press F8) to open a document in the application associated with it. For example, a Word document would be launched in Microsoft Word. See "Keyboard shortcuts" in the on-line help for a complete list of keyboard shortcuts. Create a Quick Summary of Your Search Results An easy way to see the hits in all retrieved documents is to build a search report. A search report shows all hits along with the amount of context that you request. 1. Click Search > Search Report. The Generate Search Report dialog box will appear. 6 dtSearch Manual 2. Enter the number of words (or paragraphs) of context that you want dtSearch to include in your search report and click OK to generate the report. 3. The search report will open in your word processor so you can edit or print it. Installing dtSearch on a Network To install dtSearch on a network, you can either set up dtSearch to run from a shared directory or you can install dtSearch on each user's computer. If dtSearch is installed separately on each user's computer, it will generally load faster because local disk access is faster. In either case, users can use shared index libraries or Recognize Index in the Index Manager to access shared network indexes. On Windows networks with Microsoft CMS, you can also automatically deploy dtSearch. See "Automatic deployment of dtSearch on a network" in this manual for more information. Running dtSearch from a shared network folder To set dtSearch up to run from a shared network folder, 1. Install dtSearch in a folder on the server that each user will have read-only access to. 2. Create shortcuts for network users to run dtsrun.exe. 3. Use command-line options in the shortcuts to specify a private directory or shared index library for users. Command-line options /dir <folder> The /dir command-line option specifies a location for the user's personal dtSearch folder, if one is not already set up for that user.